My Article "Immagini Agentive: uno Sguardo Biosemiotico" on:
Lexia 17-18: Efficacious Images.

Although not so nerd my article will appear on the next issue of the International Journal of Semiotics of Turin university: Lexia.
Here you can find the abstract of my article and the issue's cover!

 Abstract:
This paper exposes some considerations on images' agentivity and
its links with biology and evolution. Trying to find out which kind of images are able to make people do things without involving any
cognitive process, brings us to wonder about the role of natural
instinct in our way of communicate. A biosemiotic point of view
become thus very important to understand the way of working and the source of agentivity in images. If traditional tools fails to investigate properly a message without a content, biology give us an answer. An answer that we need to understand how and why some images cause a certain reaction in us.

Key words: images, agentivity, biosemiotics, evolution, semiotics.

Link

The Video of "Toward a Semiotic Analysis of Toys" now on Youtube.

Here the video of the presentation I gave in Sofia last Septmeber, official beginning of my work on semiotics of toys...

Next step: a semiotic analysis of the substance of expression of the toy-language that I'll present in Teramo at the annual congress of the Italian Association of Semiotic Studies (AISS).

"Toward a Semiotic Analysis of Toys" in Sofia.

I just uploaded the transcript of my presentation "Toward a Semiotic Analysis of Toys" held in Sofia at New Bulgarian Univeristy for the 12th World Congress of Semiotics.

The paper focuses on the definition of toys as a specific kind of signs and on the semiotic analysis of a toy-language (or many toy-idiolects). In the conlusions a link is drawn between the activity of playing with toys and Lotman's idea of autocommunication.

Read the full article on Academia!

"Playing for Real" in Ankara.

I just uploaded the transcript of my presentation "Playing for Real: between the world of play and the real world" for the "Is it Real?" semiotic conference in Ankara, Turkey.
The paper is about concieving the world of play as an alternative reality and about how the semiotic literacy in the domain of play guides us in interpreting each other playfulness.
The movie "The Game" by Fincher, is used as case study.
Read it on Academia!

12th World Congress of  Semiotics in Sofia.

Just come back from the fair Sofia (Bulgaria) where it has been held the 12th world congress of semiotics.

Between the many presentations I'ld like to mention three of the most relevant for Game Studies:

Maria Katsaridou: Adaptation of videogames into films: the adventures of narrative, an interesting parallel analysis of Resident Evil games and films.

Hiroshi Yoshida: Early Decades of Video Game Culture in Japan, an original insight on Japaneese videogames focusing on digital games' and gadgets' affordances.

Simon Levesque: Semiotics of Play: the origin of 'flights of fancy' according to Henri Labori, a cognitive approach to playfulness linking abstraction and play in the work of the French physician.

As for me, I'll soon upload my presentation on Semiotics of Toys!

Meanwhile, here you can find our big smiotic family!

 click here to full-size.

The (Un)deniable link between Videogames and Violence.

A truth-speaking comic by MercWorks and Andrew Bridgman.

Brickfilms: Cinema, Space and Lego.

Since the beginning cinema has been fascinate by space: it is known that the first movie ever has been Le voyage dans la Lune by Geroge Méliès.

Less known is that also the first brickfilm (you know, Lego stop-motion videos) treats of the same topic. For an exceptional coincidence 1973's En rejse til månen has the very same title, just in Danish. Twelve years old Lars Hassing and his brother Henrik realized it for their grandparents golden wedding anniversary and were influenced by the Apollo program. Apparently they even went up to and showed it to Godtfred Kirk Christiansen, who, in sign of appreciation, rewarded the lucky kids with large Lego sets.

Coincidences, however, aren't over. The second ever birckfilm is Lego Wars by Fernando Escovar. It was inspired by a trendy movie of the time: Star Wars. The displayed minifigures hold medieval weapons and the spaceship is truly a Red Cross helicopter: Star Wars Lego sets weren't available at the time. 

That's the thing, though, Fernando would maybe have been surprised to know that nineteen years later Star Wars would become the first ever licensed theme featured in Lego.

Benny approves! 

... and so does Vader!